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Cyberattack forces Health Sciences North to place systems on downtime at 24 hospitals

A cyberattack on Health Sciences North in Sudbury, Ontario, yesterday has reportedly disrupted multiple systems at 24 of the Canadian health provider's hospital facilities in the northeastern part of the province.

Dominic Giroux, CEO of Health Sciences North, said the virus that caused the incident "is not captured by the current anti-virus tools that are available on the market," the CBC News has reported. "As a safety measure, we put all our systems on downtime to avoid any contamination of the systems at HSN."

The epicenter of the infection reportedly took place in HSN's cancer program system, but the downtime also is affecting electronic medical records, medical imaging systems and email and office productivity software.

Fortunately, Giroux said there was no data breach and the data was not corrupted by the malware.

Bradley Barth

As director of community content at CyberRisk Alliance, Bradley Barth develops content for SC Media online conferences and events, as well as video/multimedia projects. For nearly six years, he wrote and reported for SC Media as deputy editor and, before that, senior reporter. He was previously a program executive with the tech-focused PR firm Voxus. Past journalistic experience includes stints as business editor at Executive Technology, a staff writer at New York Sportscene and a freelance journalist covering travel and entertainment. In his spare time, Bradley also writes screenplays.

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